Threnody
by Bowie Hawkins
Summary: Threnody: A song, hymn, or poem of mourning composed and performed as a memorial to the dead. The story of how Commander R. Hannah Shepard, first human Spectre, brought an end to the Reaper War, and what happened in the aftermath of her victory.
1. They Only Fade Away

It was a cold, quiet morning in Arlington Cemetery. The surviving crew of the Normandy was gathered around the grave, listening to Ashley recite the poem she had picked for the occasion.

"Under the wide and starry sky, dig my grave and let me lie: Glad I did live and gladly die, and I lay me down with a will. This be the verse you 'grave for me: Here he lies where he long'd to be. Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter, home from the hill."

Ashley looked away from her squadmates, trying not to tear up as the riflemen behind her began the 21 gun salute and Taps began to play.

"I think he would have appreciated that, Ash," Shepard said, "He always seemed to like you … or at least, you were the one he complained about to me the least. Hell, from him that was practically a marriage proposal." She looked down at the headstone with its inscription of _Javik / SSV Normandy SR-2 / Reaper War / Nov 11 2186 / Purpose Fulfilled_. "It's not where he wanted to be buried," she continued as Liara lowered her back onto her chair, "but I think he would appreciate the view."

Arlington had survived the Reaper occupation mostly unscathed, although the blackened marble where the Tomb of the Unknowns had once stood served as a reminder that nothing the enemy had touched had managed to remain unscarred. They'd heard the stories about how the tomb guard had maintained discipline until the swarm of husks had attacked his position. The guards carried rifles but were issued no thermal clips, and so he had used his weapon as a club to destroy his attackers until a passing Destroyer had trained its beam weapon on him.

"And he'd be grateful you were able to finish his job, Skipper."

"If he wasn't too busy listing all the ways I did it wrong," Shepard answered with a wry smile.

"He wasn't much of a charmer", Ashley replied, shaking her head, "but he was a good soldier. He'd be proud of you. He **was** proud of you, Shepard." There was a long silent moment before Ashley spoke again. "How did it happen?"

Shepard looked down, took a deep breath, then started speaking about the final push to the Reaper conduit.

"_Go! Go! Go," Anderson shouted as the last survivors of Hammer ran alongside the last functional Mako down the A4. With the chance to pause long enough to aim her Black Widow X sniper rifle gone, Shepard had switched to her Paladin pistol, and was using it to best possible effect on the husks standing between her and Trafalgar square. _This is easy_, Shepard thought as they crested the last rise before they would reach the conduit that had been built where Nelson's column had once stood, _This is far too…  
_  
And that was when Harbinger had landed, shattering the last intact portion of the National Portrait Gallery to ruins beneath it. She wasn't entirely sure how she knew that the dreadnought was that specific Reaper, but she knew its identity with as much certainty as she knew her own. And the whispers that had been haunting her sleep, that had plagued her since the beginning of the battle of London, grew to a roar as Harbinger began firing its main beam at the oncoming soldiers. The first blast caught the front of the Mako, flipping it forward too rapidly to hear the screams of its crew, with each successive blast reducing another group of soldiers to ash until there were none left but her, Liara, Javik, Anderson, and Coats._

_**SHEPARD**__, she heard Harbinger say as it targeted her. The air around her began to turn red, then green as she saw the wreckage of the Mako fly to intercept Harbinger's beam.  
_  
"And you already know the rest, Ash," Shepard said in a raw whisper, "Javik used his biotics to block Harbinger's beam from hitting me, but when it touched off the Mako's eezo core the shrapnel from the explosion that knocked me out … he took a larger piece. So no, Ash, he wasn't just a good soldier. He was the best." She looked past Javik's headstone to the other newly-planted ones beyond it. "They all were."


	2. Choices And Consequences

_"But what happened after that, Skipper," Ashley asked. _

_Shepard spoke about how she had struggled to her feet. How she'd limped over to where Liara had fallen. She let go of the breath hadn't realized that she had been holding when she found the asari's pulse was holding steady, then leaned down to place a kiss which she hoped wouldn't be her last on Liara's forehead. "Love you, Bluebonnet," Shepard said in a hoarse whisper, then retrieved her pistol from where it had landed and began her approach to the transit beam._

_Shepard told of how she had made her way onto the Crucible, of her confrontation with the Illusive Man, and of the choices the Catalyst had presented to her…_

"The paths are open", the voice of the Catalyst said, "but you have to choose."

Shepard thought for a long, painful moment, blinking to try to clear the strange brightness everything around her had from her eyes, then turned toward it with a slow glare.

"Bullshit," she said, "none of those are open paths. I get to destroy the Reapers, but only if I murder a friend and an entire race that I worked so hard to save, and that another friend sacrificed himself for? Or I get to make the same mistake that the Illusive Man did, and try to control things that have spent millions of years learning how to manipulate? Or I let myself die to make everything one big happy family? That's bullshit, and you may have almost gotten me to buy that those were the only options, but they all wind up leaving you on top, don't they?

"This isn't actually real, is it? I've been wondering why everything looked too perfect since I got up here, and I think I finally figured it out: This is another simulation like the one that Legion took me into, and David Archer before him, by using the implants Cerberus put in me. The ones you've used to appear to me before, the ones the whispers were coming to me through.

"And you can't tell me that the created will always rise to murder the creators. EDI only lashed out because she was confused and unable to communicate after she reached self-awareness. The Geth only went to war to protect themselves from destruction, until **you** – the ones who preach that organic life must be protected from synthetics – turned them into a knife at the throat of the galaxy. I've had to walk the razor's edge time and again to save them, and others like them, and you want to tell me that was all for **nothing**? **Bullshit**!

"So what would **really** happen if I chose the options you gave me? And what's the fourth choice you didn't tell me about?"

The projection of the child bowed its head, accepting defeat.

"The first choice, destruction, would have killed you. If you were willing to slaughter those you have fought so hard to protect, and destroy the Relays despite the damage to the galaxy that would have caused, then you could not be trusted with guardianship of the next cycle. That was the choice that the Prothean who reached me during the last cycle made.

"The second, control, was as much an illusion as the one the Illusive Man clung to. The mechanism would have killed you, and the current cycle would have gone on.

"And synthesis … You would not have died. Not exactly. You would have become the basis for the next Nazara-class Reaper. You would have been the one leading the final assaults on each of the advanced races that survived past the end of your conversion, the better to teach you to obey.

"But yes," the projection continued, "there is a fourth option. You can activate the Crucible, and it will achieve its intended purpose: I and the Reapers will be destroyed. One final gift to you and your fellow young races."

And a switch manifested in front of Shepard.

"We apologise for the rather prosaic nature of its appearance, but as you deduced, everything you have experienced since you arrived on the Catalyst was a simulation. It is force of will that you use to activate it, not guns or strength of arms.

"But…" the projection continued, interrupting Shepard as she began reaching for the switch, "Could … could I have one last moment to look out at the stars before you do so? After all these millions of years I stand at the edge of nonexistence … and although you may not believe a machine truly capable of this … I am scared, Shepard."

Despite everything that the Reapers had done, despite everything and everyone she had lost, Shepard felt tears begin rolling down her face. Simulated they may be, but they were still as wet. She took the shoulder of the projection of the child standing before her, and hugged it to her as tightly as she could imagine.

"I'm sorry," she told it, "I saved the rachni so that they could sing their songs in peace again. I saved the krogan so that they could build new lives for themselves. I saved the geth and the quarians so that they could learn to live together again." And a sob, simulated or no, left her unable to speak for a long moment.

She looked out at the scenes of battle raging around Earth, each new star burning in the orbit of her race's homeworld a headstone for the newly dead.

"But I don't know how to save **you**."

She pulled the switch.


	3. Harbinger's Parting Gift

The projection of the boy dropped to its knees as Shepard pulled the switch, hands reaching for its ears, then dissolved into static before resolving into the image of Harbinger.

**YOU HAVE WON**, it projected at her, **NOW LISTEN TO US DIE**.

And the whispers that had been haunting Shepard's dreams became a roar as the Crucible opened her mind to the Reaper hivemind, and for the briefest of moments she heard their voices, raised in unity. She could almost have described it as beautiful, if she hadn't known whom the voices belonged to. Then the common language of the Reapers began to be washed away as each of the machines began communicating in the language of the race that it had been created from, and the certainty of unified purpose became replaced by confusion and fear.

Shepard could feel the weight of the emotion in Harbinger's final look at her, but before she could ask it exactly what that emotion was the projection shattered in a blinding flash and was lost, along with all the others that spoke the tongue of its originators. When the last of Harbinger's generation was gone the fear in the hivemind became open panic. Shepard tried placing her hands over her ears, but something – either her knowledge that this was a simulation or Harbinger's spite, Shepard was never certain – prevented it from doing any good. She heard each species of Reaper die with excruciating clarity, and not even her own screams could block that out. A long, painful time later, the only voice left was the dying song of the prothean-derived Reapers, and then silence as the simulation she had been trapped inside ended.

Shepard awoke to the sound and smell of metal burning.


End file.
